Biodiversity and Global Change MSc

About the course

Human-driven global changes are having a dramatic and devastating impact on biodiversity. 

There’s a growing need for professionals who can apply advanced scientific tools and understanding to precipitate the fundamental societal changes needed to protect our living world.  

A collaboration between three internationally-renowned research institutions, this course will give you an intensive training in the core science, methodologies and hands-on skills of the field.  

You’ll build the expertise and network to forge a conservation-focused career in academia, environmental policy and management or any organisation committed to securing a more sustainable future.

Visit our prospectus page to find out more:

Meet the programme lead

Professor Tim Newbold 

Tim Newbold is a Professor of Conservation Ecology. His current research aims to understand how biodiversity is changing in response to recent environmental change, and to predict how biodiversity will change in the future. He’s also looking at the consequences of biodiversity change for human societies. His work centres around large-scale data analysis and developing models of biodiversity and ecosystems.

Learn more about Prof Tim Newbold.

Field Trip: Blakeney Point

The field trip, which involves students staying on Blakeney Point for two to three nights, provides students with their first exposure to teaching on their course, and aims to encourage them to think about experimental design, how to design a protocol for field sampling to solve a specific problem, and collect data following said protocol. This introduces them to some of the problems they may experience whilst working with biological samples and sampling.

UCL has been running field trips to Blakeney Point for over a century. Students arrive by boat in small groups and are often the only people staying on the Point at one time. During their stay, students are able to see the habitat of an array of residential and migratory wildlife.

Professor Tim Blackburn states: “The Blakeney field trip is a great way for us to get to know the students – and for the students to get to know each other – against the backdrop of one of England’s oldest nature reserves." You can read about the 2024 visit to Blakeney Point in this article: Blakeney Point of View.